December 22, 2017

The Saint's Return 1953

The Saint's Return is a 1953 British movie that was released as The Saint's Girl Friday in the USA. It was ten years since the last RKO Saint picture.It's only superficially part of the series, some film sites include it and some don't. It was produced by Hammer Film Production, and distributed by RKO in the US. They had hopes of reviving The Saint as a movie series. It didn't happen. It's got a screenplay written by Allan MacKinnon and it's directed by Seymour Friedman.

Louis Hayward returns to the role of Simon Templar. He had appeared as The Saint in the first RKO Saint film back in 1938. He plays The Saint a bit differently the second time out. He was more the tough guy in the first, more sophisticated in the last. In this picture The Saint gets a cry for help from an old friend. When he arrives in London a few days later the woman had died in a suspicious auto accident.

The Saint goes after the guys what did it, a gambling ring that plays for keeps, and smashes their lights in. There's more deaths along the way but The Saint keeps ahead of Inspector Teal, who's played by Charles Victor. The Saint's old pal Hoppy Uniatz appears on screen for the first time. In the books he's an American gangster of dubious intelligence. Here he's a British butler with a big streak of larceny. He's more like Orace, the Saint's British butler in the novels. Hoppy would return in an episode of the Roger Moore TV series. I enjoyed the guy. He'd accidentally kill people, then get all sheepish.

It's got a descent plot going but the movie seems to poke along. The print that's available online is pretty poor. It's fuzzy and grey. Sadly, there are only bootlegs of the movie available, even in the UK there's no real release. You can see various versions on YouTube. Here's one. I kept a copy to have one. It would have been nice to see a better copy of the movie.